The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-012 - secondary catalog

Gringai

Australia - Williams River valley, Dungog-Gresford district - Southeast NSW

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Mathews’ full plate of bull-roarers used by the Australian Aborigines. Fig. 9 on this plate is the gonnandhakeen of the Hunter–Macleay rivers...
Mathews’ full plate of bull-roarers used by the Australian Aborigines. Fig. 9 on this plate is the gonnandhakeen of the Hunter–Macleay rivers tribes — Gringai country lies within this distribution. R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), pl. 9 (fig. 9) Public domain Image source

Torikotti English

Torikotti: the Gringai name for the bullroarer recorded by K. W. Boydell and published by Howitt; no literal translation is supplied.

The Gringai of the Williams River country dreaded thunder: it was the anger of Coen, the being who presided over their world — 'as is shown later on, this being is Coen,' Howitt wrote of them. He is the Koin whom Threlkeld's Awabakal neighbours described as a black-painted figure carrying a fire-stick, who comes ahead of the gatherings where the ceremonies are held. At the Gresford initiation the boy was painted red and seated in an earthen ring while the women lay around it with covered faces; he was led, eyes to the ground, to a second ring, shown the carved trees, secluded some ten days to learn the songs and dances, then washed, repainted white, and returned to the women's camp. 'The bull-roarer is called by the Gringai Torikotti,' Howitt records, 'and is used in these ceremonies.' The account reached him from the Allyn River settler J. W. Boydell through John Fraser of Maitland — the same scholar whose Awabakal volume preserves Koin.

The Gringai had a great dread of thunder, and believed it to be the demonstration of the anger of some supernatural being, rebuking them for some impropriety. As is shown later on, this being is Coen.

Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), p. 431
Object
Bullroarer named Torikotti, used in the Gresford Gringai initiation ceremony; the source gives no material, dimensions, or construction.
Function
Used in the Gresford-district initiation (twin earthen rings, carved trees, ten-day seclusion) presided over, in Howitt's account of these tribes, by the being Coen/Koin
Map confidence
high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
Howitt 1904, pp. 570-571, esp. p. 571; Mathews, JAI 26 (1896):320-340

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